Look Here

He goes home and writes. He sits in one place, finds words somewhere he
     can’t name, who
could? “That word came from the west end of the cerebral cortex,” or “Here’s
     a word waits
to dance where prefrontal lobotomies haunt the vacant eyes stumbling in the
     street” . . .
Is it like playing scales? running through the keys, pitching the sound that
     reaches beauty
where she wakes? fingers moving, body swaying, song humming at the edges
     of skin . . .
And writes, “I woke when she woke and we were harvest for our eyes.”

He can’t sleep even when he loses the map his words had made in the
     beginning when the drowse arrived,
the roll of the dice careened off the page, nothing made sense, the die turned
     up empty, you had to make it somehow, anyhow . . .
Gods would know how he tries, why he’s patient and who she is who walks
     into the room of his mind naked.
Sure they do, the leches, they want her for themselves, they spread their money
     on the floor, wait for her to come . . .
He turns over and sees the grinning skull multiply, their fingers grasping for
     what will never be theirs,
and that’s the way he dreams before he sleeps, imagining holding her, coupling
     their flesh, falling into her . . .

It’s dark when he wakes. He walks in the steps the night has taken. He hears his
     feet fall.
He goes all the way to where he can sit and eat and sip coffee and wait for her to get off work. She’s what he was dreaming, he believes dreams are
     harbingers of dreams
you feel being born as though you could know what it is brings love from the
     pain of birth,
you look, she’s there, you tap on the window, she notices, she smiles, she’s
     here to sit
where you are, across the table, you thought you were sleeping, holding her
     hands, hers yours.

(26 January 2012)

copyright 2012 by Floyce Alexander